39 thoughts on “Delay”

no worries Tieshaunn I know us fans like to feel like you owe us something but in truth we are lucky to have you writing something for us. just please dont stop writing I do not think I could handle it if this story got canceled.

oh wow its been 3 chapter this month feels like more. have the chapters been longer this month? idk why but I thought you had put four out. what I was trying to say is that we love your work and if it takes a bit more time for it to be written well I think we are willing to wait. but honestly thanks for keeping us posted

Hell Tie take all the time and release a published version. You have enough material for 2-3 books and that isn’t counting the files or world building interludes. You deserve some income from all the work you have done over the years.

As I said precedently Parts I-V (including Berlin then) make 160k words or 440 paperback pages. To me the first four are an unit, and An Ember of Hope give an interesting backstory. The first four Interludes are important for your world : 1/ The birth of Bree 2/ Mars, I found also references to Macian and Amy 3/ Ember in the Protectorate and the ouroboros of ravens and 4/ the birth of LL and the Dark.

Well, here are my thoughts on publishing and editing. Just to let you know, I am terrible when it comes to putting my thoughts in words, and even worse when it comes to providing productive feedback, so yeah, be warned.

Not sure if I would put the entire Ember of Hope arc in the first book. And the interludes of the later arcs might become a problem. Sure, one interlude after each arc shouldn’t be a problem, but both arc 12 and 13 for example have five each. At least in the later books all those different timelines and timejumps will only confuse most readers. If I were you I would probably change the order of all the interludes to be chronological and then evenly redistribute them between all of your planed books. Having only two timelines that eventually catch up with each other would make it easier to figure out when exactly something happened in relation to other events.

Maybe you could also combine some of the not so important interludes with the monkey arc for a book 2.5

And in retrospect we guessed the entire Macian/Basil thing way too early. In arc 3 we learn that there is a potential connection between the S6, Macian and Basil. At this point Chekhov’s gun already seals the deal, but it takes 10 more arcs until we get definite canon confirmation.
I would at the very least not namedrop Macian this early. Just say that the S6 are looking for someone and leave it at that. Let the readers figure out the S6/Macian connection in Ember of Hope.
Btw, maybe remove the name part from the last(?) Ember of Hope chapter. I have said it above, and I will say it again: revealing something as big as the Macian/Basil thing and then not really coming back to it until arc 13-15 just feels wrong. If we look at the books you have outlined it would mean that you more or less confirm Basil/Macian in book 1 and then don’t mention it again for 2 entire books.
If my memory serves me right the Ember of Hope chapters are rather short compared to what you usually write. You could probably combine some of them and turn the entire arc into a series of interludes, which would make sense since they are not part of the main timeline. Assuming that you will reorder your interludes the Ember of Hope Arc and that we have enough interludes before 2006 the entire arc would probably end up in book 2 or 3, which would space the Basil/Macian hints out more evenly.

Last but not least: the Protectorate. Let me tell you, this one has thrown me off a lot when I started reading Brennus. As mentioned before, the timeline somehow doesn’t quite add up. But the more I think about it the more I realize that this could be a perfect red herring. Considering the fact that Macian had used a lot of Atrocities tech to fix himself and also had access to Ember it would be quite possible for Basil to appear to be younger than he actually is.

Oh, and you might want to start linking to the topwebfiction vote page under your latest chapters. Getting a better rating could help to draw in more patreons.

I’ve thought about doing the same thing. My idea was basically, “What if Tyche died instead of manifesting?” And then look at the butterflies that follow. Unfortunately, my inspiration (or maybe setting knowledge) dried up quickly afterward.

All I came up with was Brennus lost after trying to solo the Snow Queen. Then, with that blow to his ego, ended up joining UJH. I just couldn’t figure out what next.

without Tyche’s intervention, it’s very likely that Basil would’ve arrived much later in that fight, and Hecate would’ve gotten seriously hurt (like in canon), only without Basil’s immediate intervention and Tyche’s luck to treat her, putting her in the hospital and blowing her cape to her family.

Basil would most likely have remained independent, focusing more on stealth, gathering information and taking his enemies out from ambush, while Hecate would’ve been pressganged into joining either the UJH or a government team (more likely the former than the latter), mostly by her family wanting to keep her safe.

It wouldn’t help much though, she’d likely die either to the Spiteborn or to Hastur’s minions, having lacked Basil’s input in shaping her loadout and training, as well as Tyche’s luck.

Yes, but I still don’t know any of that for certain… even if the author is saying so. I thought that Amy arranged the encounter with the Snow Queen to try to teach Basil that it was foolish to go it alone. And then I figured that it was Tyche’s power that arranged for Hecate to end up in the fight and ruin the lesson.

Most likely, I’d retain a Station of the Canon by still having Brennus perform some sort of medical rescue on Hecate. That would probably be treating injuries inflicted by Panthera Rex in the lead up to the Hastur arc.

The fact that Brennus has a secret base, and helped a vigilante escape being unmasked, would be part of a larger trend of him chafing under UH authority. The UH would eventually escalate by declaring Amy an unfit guardian, and keeping him confined to base except while on operation, “for his own safety”.

Later, Mindstar would brazenly kidnap/rescue him. And then the UJH team would try to rescue/kidnap him from a “Syndicate safehouse”, which is actually his own secret base.

And yes, publicly admitting to having had the fanfic idea did force a little more inspiration out of me.

Mindstar did arrange it, but Hecate would still have gotten there first.

The UH don’t have the power to declare someone an “unfit guardian”. Do remember that they’re an NGO. While they could bring the matter to the proper authorities, they couldn’t, in and of themselves, do that, or confine Basil to anywhere unless he breaks the law, or they are somehow given guardianship over him by the state.

The rest could work, I guess. The Dark would eat a lot of popcorn and get very amused.

While I hadn’t remembered that the UH was an NGO, that only means they’d have to work a bit harder to have Amy declared an unfit guardian.

I mean, if I was running a superhero organization, I would try to use my espers to dig up a lot of dirt on politicians. In part, because that would give my team leads to organized crime. But I could also use that as leverage to help me do the right thing, such as getting a reckless young gadgeteer into protective custody before he gets kidnapped by a less scrupulous group.

I had no intent to make the UH evil. Nor even as pragmatic as the Citadel. They are just a little too full of themselves.